Educate! is a high-growth and award-winning non-profit social enterprise. Since its launch in 2009, Educate! has worked to find a way to measurably change the trajectory of the lives of youth across Africa -  delivering outsized impacts at scale and at disproportionately low cost, towards the aim of addressing youth unemployment. As a disruptive, nonprofit social enterprise, our team leverages an obsession with evidence and entrepreneurial drive to tackle one of our planet's greatest challenges — unlocking the potential of its youngest continent. Educate! prepares youth in Africa with the skills to succeed in today’s economy. We've created a 100-hour experience that delivers the most essential skills youth need to transition to work, combining training, mentorship, and practical experience starting a business. We deliver this experience to youth in 3 ways: directly to schools, integrated into education systems, and through bootcamps for out-of-school youth. All three delivery channels have been validated by several independent evaluations, and to date, more than 200,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted by this model across Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. Along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 160 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started other organizations and 5 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy, and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by Bill Gates, in the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, and The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative. Educate! was also selected by the UN’s Generation Unlimited as 1 of 20 innovative youth solutions and by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. Our plan is to grow our reach 3x over the next 3 years. 

The Opportunity

Educate! is seeking a dynamic Director of Marketing & Communications to lead the development and deployment of our organizational storytelling, narrative and positioning. Educate! grew reach 20x in the 6 years before COVID, and over the next 3 years plans to grow 3-5x more. Having developed a number of evidence-based solutions that address youth employment on the world’s youngest continent, this role will lead the storytelling and positioning to drive growth. Success will involve positioning in the market the two ideas behind Educate!’s growth strategy. It will also include driving messaging targeted at funders, institutional actors, as well as governments and top-tier talent.

As the Director of Marketing & Communications, you will sit on the leadership team and play a key role in developing the story, messaging and materials that will drive the buy-in and support of these and other critical audiences. The role requires an experienced communicator who can operate at a strategic level, while also being able to be directly involved in tactical execution. Supported by a communication team consisting of 4 (full-time, contractor and intern colleagues) the Director of Marketing & Communications will collaborate with leaders across the organization. This role will report to Educate!’s Co-Founder and CEO.

Role Responsibilities:

Drive Communications through Global Brand, Message, Stories and Assets

• Working with the Senior Marketing Manager, oversee Educate! org-wide brand, story, message and assets, in support of and aligned to Educate! Strategy
• In particular, lead the refinement of Educate!’s Communication Strategy and its execution in the context of the organization’s Strategic Plan
• Coordinate and oversee a rich annual Communication Plan, managing a matrix of owned and earned media to deliver Educate!’s story 
• Work with M&E Director on an ongoing basis to package new and existing research and evidence in order to engage key academics and thought leaders in support of above positions.
• Position amongst key stakeholders the two ideas driving Educate!’s growth:
  • Single-subject reform as the best way to reform secondary education: Establish strategic positioning and supporting messages for Educate!’s education reform model, which targets the reform of a single academic subject. Work to build this idea as a leading evidence-based solution in education, e.g. the “Teaching at the Right Level of Secondary School.”
  • Category Creation of Alternative Pathways Establish a category of alternative pathways for youth who can’t access traditional high school (50%+ of youth in Africa) and build key messages to support the development of that category.

Develop and Execute Content Marketing Strategy

• Create content marketing/ thought leadership strategy built off of our organizational strategy and oversee its execution to directly advance org-wide priorities, including the two positions mentioned above
• Serve as Educate!’s public relations lead, building relationships with external parties such as thought leaders, press, and other media partners that help us to build brand awareness and disseminate our stories and messages
• Identify user journey for key stakeholders and map content marketing and engagement strategy to these user journeys to best drive adoption of two key ideas
• Draft and oversee a modest annual marketing budget, maximizing the organization’s revenue growth and sales efforts. 
• Develop and refine key performance indicators and other measures to evaluate our success

Lead Internal Communications

• Working with the COO, Deputy COO, Director of Talent and other top leaders, oversee internal communications that build and maintain staff engagement and alignment, including thinking strategically about how external communications can be used internally
• Manage all-hands calls and continuous communications to the organization
• Over time, lead change communications and other key internal communications
• Leveraging communications team, provide internal communications support to COO and Country Leaders

Deliver Strategic Communications and Marketing Initiatives

• Provide marketing and communications support for new country expansion and government engagement strategy, as well as to countries and other teams as necessary
• Lead and/or support on strategic communications and marketing initiatives as they arise that drive business growth or results
• Working with CEO, identify and attract best-in-world advisors and resources to support the development and execution of Educate! communications and marketing strategy

• 5-8 years of communications or marketing experience
• Strong communication and writing aptitude - comfort generating copy is a must
• Experience in digital communications is a big advantage, as is any experience in media creation
• Ability to clearly convey impact evaluations and results, a plus
• Education or non-profit background NOT required
• Passion and interest in youth development
• An open-minded team player with experience working with distributed teams
• A good fit with our Five Cultural Tenets (see “What is Educate! About?” Below; learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here
• Candidates of African nationality or descent are strongly encouraged to apply

Location and Time Zones

This role can be virtual, with a willingness to travel to meet with teams, youth and other key stakeholders. There is, however, a requirement to have some time zone overlap with East Africa time zones

• Globally competitive salary

• We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

• We are dedicated to our five cultural tenents:
  • We Put Youth First - The youth we serve come first. Always. In everything. That means we wake up thinking of ways we can serve youth even better and get the highest impact out of every dollar that we spend. It means Educate! doesn’t own a single vehicle, because we’d rather take the bus if it means one more student can participate. It means making every decision like the future depends on it — because if we get our way, it does.
  • We Are Always Learning - When you work at Educate!, educating yourself is part of your job too. We encourage every employee to find the best book on management; share the latest article on graphic design; bring in your favorite mentor; or meet the researcher pushing the edge of the field. We are always thirsty for knowledge and love to share
  • We Only Solve a Problem Once - We are allergic to band-aids so we love the person who brings the new system to solve the problem for good, even problems we haven’t recognized yet
  • We Are Flexible - We thrive on change — we’re driving it. We are growing every day, so we have to adapt quickly to meet new challenges, and our team keeps up
  • We Exceed Expectations - We assume we can achieve the impossible because we already have, year after year. We want our staff to create their own challenges, ask the toughest questions, and dream scary big!

  • Every person at Educate! — from interns to the CEO — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do

• Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team

What if there was a way to measurably change the trajectory of the lives of youth across Africa?

Since its launch in 2009, Educate! has worked to do just this, delivering outsized impacts at scale and at disproportionately low cost, through a product-led approach to youth development. As a disruptive, not-for-profit, social enterprise, our team leverages an obsession with evidence and entrepreneurial drive to tackle one our planet's greatest challenges - unlocking the potential of its youngest continent. Educate!’s core model combines training in key skills with access to practical experience starting a business and mentorship, a formula that has been validated by several independent evaluations. This model is distributed through products targeting two lead channels. First, Educate! works with governments to help reform education systems at scale through policy change, teacher behavior change and tech-enabled products targeting systems-level sustainability, while also working directly with select schools. Second, Educate! builds employment-focused bootcamps and business support services targeting out-of-school youth left out of the education system. To date, more than 200,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted by this model across Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya and along the way Educate! has become the largest youth skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 160 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We have been backed by top foundations and product leaders such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy, Echoing Green, the 1st Google Employee’s foundation, the head of Google Search and Rippleworks Foundation. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by Bill Gates, in the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, and The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies in their global scaling education learning initiative. Educate! was also selected by the UN’s Generation Unlimited as 1 of 20 innovative youth solutions and by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator.